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IV 



CQE3SIGHT BEPQSffi 



BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE 

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS 
ON EDUCATION 



BY 

WILLIAM SUDDARDS FRANKLIN 



SECOND EDITION 



SOUTH BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA 

FRANKLIN, MACNUTT and CHARLES 

PUBLISHERS OF EDUCATIONAL BOOKS 

1917 

All rights reserved 



LB4/ 

'in 



• F** 



Copyright, 191 7 
By Wm. S. Franklin 



/ 

#.R -I 1917 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER. PA. 



CLA457277 



There is no frigate like a book 

To take one — lands away; 
Nor any courser like a page 

Of prancing poetry! 

Such traverse may the humblest make 

Without oppress of toll; 
How frugal is the chariot 

That bears a human soul! 

Emily Dickinson. 



in 



" The time will come when men will think of nothing 
but education." 

Since the first of August, 1914, this prophecy of Nietzsche's 
has shaped itself in the author's mind in an altered tense and 
in an altered mood. ' The time has come when men must 
think of nothing but education.' And by education the author 
does not mean inconsequential bookishness — and neither did 
Nietzsche ! 



After sending out the first edition of this book the author 
received from a business friend a long letter in mild expostu- 
lation which showed the business man's interpretation of 
Nietzsche : — ' The time will come when all men will be 
school teachers and attend County Institutes ! ' 

And a recent attempt by the author and some of his asso- 
ciates to get a group of manufacturers to take an active inter- 
est in the educational problems of their community revealed 
what the manufacturers' interpretation of Nietzsche would 
be : — ' The time will come when all men will be members of 
School Boards and do nothing whatever but wrangle over the 
appointment of School Janitors ! ' 



// thinking did not begin with things as they are, every 
philosopher might be a thinker; and if thinking did in fact end 
in things as they are, our business men and manufacturers 
would all be philosophers! 



IV 



PREFACE 

Your attention is called especially to the five 
short essays, Play as a Training in Application, 
The Energizing of Play, The Discipline of 
Work, The Uses of Hardship, and The Public 
School. These essays are so compact that a re- 
viewer of the first edition of this book was led to 
call it A Package of Dynamite. 

The greater part of the title essay, Bill's 
School and Mine, was written in 1903, but the 
title and some of the material of the essay were 
borrowed from my friend William Allen White. 
The tall talk which is sprinkled throughout this 
essay is not intended to be actually fatal in its 
seemingly murderous quality. Many contented 
city people in reading this essay need to be 
prompted after the manner of the legendary cow- 
boy who in a spell of seemingly careless gun-play 

says to his sophisticated friend, " Smile, d 

you, Smile! 

The essay, Part of an Education, is the meager 
but imaginative story of a Tramp Trip in the 
Rockies, and it is introduced here to lead up to 
the short essay on The Uses of Hardship. 

The essay, The Study of Science, is reprinted 



VI 



from Franklin and MacNutt's Mechanics and 
Heat, The Macmillan Co., 1910. 

The essay, Education after the War, is made 
up mostly of material which has been previously 
published by Franklin and MacNutt, and by 
Franklin, MacNutt and Charles. 

For the illustrations I am under obligations to 
my cousin, Mr. Daniel Garber of Philadelphia. 

Wm. S. Franklin. 

October 20, 1916^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Pace 

Bill's School and Mine i 

Play as a Training in Application .... 23 

The Energizing of Play 27 

The Discipline of Work 31 

Part of an Education 35 

The Uses of Hardship 61 

The Public School 65 

The Study of Science 73 

Education after the War 9 1 



Vll 



BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE 



I always think of my school 
as my boyhood. 

William Allen White. 



The Japanese, it seems, have domesticated nature. 

Lafcadio Hearne. 

WE have got to domesticate nature 

before much else can be 

accomplished in this 

country of ours. 



I always think of my school as my boyhood. 
Until I was big enough to swim the Missouri 
River my home was in a little Kansas town, and 
we boys lived in the woods and in the water all 
Summer, and in the woods and on the ice all 
Winter. We trapped and hunted, we rowed and 
fished, and built dams, and cut stick horses, and 
kept stick-horse livery stables where the grape- 
vines hung, and where the paw-paws mellowed 
in the Fall. We made mud slides into our 
swimming hole, and we were artists in mud- 
tattoo, painting face and body with thin black 
mud and scraping white stripes from head to 
foot. We climbed the trees and cut our names, 
we sucked the sap of the box elder and squashed 
poke berries for war paint. We picked wild 
grapes and gooseberries, and made pop-guns to 
shoot green haws. In the Autumn we gathered 
walnuts, and in the Spring we greeted the 
johnny-jump-ups, and the sweet williams as they 
peered through the mold. 

Always, we boys were out of doors, as it seems 
to me ; and I did the chores. It is something to 
learn the toughness of hickory under the saw, 
how easily walnut splits, how mean elm is to 

3 



4 BILL'S school and mine. 

handle; and a certain dexterity comes to a boy 
who teaches a calf to drink, or slops hogs without 
soiling his Sunday clothes in the evening. And 
the hay makes acrobats. In the loft a boy learns 
to turn flip-flops, and with a lariat rope he can 
make a trapeze. My rings were made by pad- 
ding the iron rings from the hubs of a lumber 
wagon and swinging them from the rafters. 

Bill, little Bethlehem Bill, has a better school 
than I had ; the house and the things that go with 
it. Bill's teachers know more accurately what 
they are about than did my teachers in the old 
days out West half a century ago. And, of 
course, Bill is getting things from his school that 
I did not get. But he is growing up with a woe- 
fully distorted idea of life. What does Bill 
know about the woods and the flowers? Where 
in Bill's makeup is that which comes from 
browsing on berries and nuts and the rank paw 
paw, and roaming the woods like the Bander- 
log? And the crops, what does he know about 
them? 

In the old days we carried our dinner pails to 
school, and in May we would picnic by the brook 
where the silver-sides used to glitter in the pool 
under the limestone ledges by the old stone 
quarry where the snakes would sun themselves at 



bill's school and mine. 5 

noon ; on the slopes the wild rose used to bloom 
for me — for me and a little brown-eyed girl 
who found her ink-bottle filled with them when 
the school bell called us in from play. And 
on Saturdays we boys roamed over the prairies 
picking wild flowers, playing wild plays and 
dreaming wild dreams — children's dreams. Do 
you suppose that little Bill dreams such dreams 
in a fifty-foot lot with only his mother's flowers 
in the window pots to teach him the great mys- 
tery of life? 

Bill has no barn. I doubt if he can skin a cat, 
and I am sure he cannot do the big drop from 
the trapeze. To turn a flip-flop would fill him 
with alarm, and yet Jim Betts, out in Kansas, 
used to turn a double flip-flop over a stack of 
barrels! And Jim Betts is a man to look at. 
He was built " by the day." He has an educated 
body, and it is going into its fifties with health 
and strength that Bill will have to work for. 
And Jim Betts and I used to make our own kites 
and nigger-shooters and sleds and rabbit traps. 

Bill's school seems real enough, but his play 
and his work seem rather empty. Of course Bill 
cannot have the fringe of a million square miles 
of wild buffalo country for his out-of-doors. No, 
Bill cannot have that. Never, again. And to 



6 bill's school and mine. 

imagine that Bill needs anything of the kind is to 
forget the magic of Bill's "make-believe!" A 
brook, a tree, a stretch of grass! What old- 
world things Bill's fancy can create there! 
What untold history repeats itself in Bill's most 
fragmentary play! Bill is, by nature, a con- 
juror. Give him but little and he will make a 
world for himself, and grow to be a man. Older 
people seem, however, to forget, and deprive 
Bill of the little that he needs; and it is worth 
while, therefore, to develop the contrast between 
Bill's school and that school of mine in the long- 
ago land of my boyhood out-of-doors. 

The Land of Out-of-Doors! What irony 
there is in such glowing phrase to city boys like 
Bill! The supreme delight of my own boyhood 
days was to gather wild flowers in a wooded 
hollow, to reach which led across a sunny stretch 
of wild meadow rising to the sky; and I would 
have you know that I lived as a boy in a land 
where a weed never grew.* I wish that Bill 

♦The western prairies, except in the very center of the Mississippi 
Valley, are beautifully rolling, and they meet every stream with 
deeply carved bluffs. In the early days the streams were fringed 
with woods; and prairie and woodland, alike, knew nothing beyond 
the evenly balanced contest of indigenous life. There were no 
weeds anywhere. Weeds came later when the land was put under 
cultivation. I remember well my first lone "beggar-louse," and 
how pretty I thought it was! and my first dandelion, and of that I 
have never changed my opinion! 



bill's school and MINE. 7 

might have access to the places where the wild 
flowers grow, and above all I wish that Bill 
might have more opportunity to see his father at 
work. A hundred years ago these things were 
within easy reach of every boy and girl; but 
now, alas, Bill sees no other manual labor than 
the digging of a ditch in a cluttered street, or 
stunted in growth, he has almost become a part 
of the machine he daily tends, and Boyville has 
become a paved and guttered city, high-walled, 
desolate, and dirty; with here and there a vacant 
lot hideous with refuse in early Spring and 
overwhelmed with an increasing pestilence of 
weeds as the Summer days go by! And the 
strangest thing about it all is, that Bill accepts 
unquestioningly, and even with manifestations 
of joy, just any sort of a world, if only it is 
flooded with sunshine. 

I remember how, in my boyhood, the rare ad- 
vent of an old tin can in my favorite swimming 
hole used to offend me, while such a thing as a 
cast-off shoe was simply intolerable, and I won- 
der that Bill's unquenchable delight in out-door 
life does not become an absolute rage in his 
indifference to the dreadful pollution of the 
streams and the universal pestilence of weeds 
grid refuse in our thickly populated districts. 



8 bill's school and mine. 

I cannot refrain from quoting an amusing 
poem of James Whitcomb Riley's, which ex- 
presses (more completely than anything I know) 
the delight of boys in out-door life, where so 
many things happen and so many things lure; 
and you can easily catch in the swing of Riley's 
verse a certain careless note which is ordinarily 
so fascinatingly boyish, but which may be too 
easily turned to a raging indifference to every- 
thing that makes for purity in this troubled life 
of ours. 

Three Jolly Hunters. 

O there were three jolly youngsters ; 

And a-hunting they did go, 
With a setter-dog and a pointer-dog 

And a yaller-dog also. 
Looky there ! 

And they hunted and they hal-looed ; 

And the first thing they did find 
Was a dingling-dangling hornets' nest 

A-swinging in the wind. 
Looky there ! 

And the first one said, " What is it ? " 

Said the next, " Let's punch and see," 
And the third one said, a mile from there, 

"I wish we'd let it be!" 
Looky there ! ( Showing the back of Jiis neck. ) 



bill's school and MINE. 9 

And they hunted and they hal-looed ; 

And the next thing they did raise 
Was a bobbin bunnie cotton-tail 

That vanished from their gaze. 
Looky there ! 

One said it was a hot baseball, 

Zippt thru the brambly thatch, 
But the others said 'twas a note by post 

Or a telergraph dispatch. 
Looky there ! 

So they hunted and they hal-looed ; 

And the next thing they did sight, 
Was a great big bull-dog chasing them, 

And a farmer hollering " Skite! " 
Looky there ! 

And the first one said " Hi-jinktum! " 

And the next, " Hi-jinktum-jee! " 
And the last one said, " Them very words 

Has just occurred to me! " 
Looky there! (Showing the tattered seat of his pants.) 

This is the hunting song of the American Ban- 
der-log,* and this kind of hunting is better than 
the kind that needs a gun! To one who falls 
into the habit of it, the gun is indeed a useless 

*See Kipling's Jungle Book. The bander-log are the monkeys 
of India, and one of the most fascinating things in the Jungle Book 
is the Road Song of the Bander-log. Many lovers of Kipling speak 
of their own youngsters — of the male sex — as belonging to the 
bander-log tribe. 



io bill's school and mine. 

tool. I am reminded of a day I spent with a 
gun at a remote place in the Rocky Mountains, 
where, during the 25 days I have camped there 
on four different trips, I have seen as many as 
150 of the wildest of North American animals, 
the Rocky Mountain sheep. I lay in ambush 
for three hours waiting for sheep, and the sheep 
came; but they were out of range again before I 
saw them because I had become so interested in 
killing mosquitoes ! I timed myself at intervals, 
and 80 mosquitoes per minute for three solid 
hours makes an honest estimate of 14,400. And 
I was hungry, too. I fancy the sheep were not 
frightened but wished the good work to go on 
undisturbed. 

Do you, perhaps, like candy? Did you ever 
consider that the only sweetmeat our forefathers 
had for thousands of years was wild honey? 
And those sour times — if I may call them such 
— before the days of sugar and candy, come 
much nearer to us than many of us realize, for I 
can remember my own grandfather's tales of bee- 
hunting in Tennessee. Just imagine how excit- 
ing it must have been in the days of long-ago to 
find a tree loaded with — candy! A bee tree! 
If Bill were to go back with me to the wild 
woods of Tennessee, some thrill of that old 



bill's school AND MINE. ii 

excitement would well up from the depths of his 
soul at finding such a tree. You may wonder 
what I am driving at, so I will tell you, that one 
of the most exciting experiences of my boyhood 
was a battle with a colony of bumble bees. I 
was led into it by an older companion and the 
ardor and excitement of that battle, as I even now 
remember it, are wholly inexplicable to me ex- 
cept I think of it as a representation through 
inherited instinct of a ten-thousand-years' search 
for wild honey. 

My schooling grew out of instinctive reactions 
toward natural things ; hunting and fishing, dig- 
ging and planting in the Spring, nutting in the 
Fall, and the thousands of variations which these 
things involve, and I believe that the play of in- 
stinct is the only solid basis of growth of a boy or 
girl. I believe, furthermore, that the very 
essence of boy humor is bound up with the amaz- 
ing incongruity of his instincts. Was there ever 
a boy whose instincts (many of them mere fatuity 
like his digestive appendix) have not led him 
time and again into just thin air, to say nothing 
of water and mud! For my part I have never 
known anything more supremely funny than 
learning what a hopeless mess of wood pulp and 
worms a bumble-bee's nest really is, except, per- 



12 bill's school and mine. 

haps, seeing another boy learn the same stinging 
lesson. 

The use of formulas, too, is unquestionably in- 
stinctive, and we all know how apt a boy is to 
indulge in formulas of the hocus-pocus sort, like 
Tom Sawyer's recipe for removing warts by the 
combined charm of black midnight and a black 
cat, dead. And a boy arrives only late in his 
boyhood, if ever, to some sense of the distinction 
between formulas of this kind arid such as are 
vital and rational. I think there is much in- 
struction and a great deal of humor connected 
with the play of this instinctive tendency. I re- 
member a great big boy, a hired man on my 
grandfather's farm, in fact, who was led into a 
fight with a nest of hornets with the expectation 
that he would bear a charmed skin if he shouted 
in loud repetition the words, "Jew's-harp, jew's- 
harp." 

Talk about catching birds by putting salt on 
their tails ! Once, as I rowed around a bend on 
a small stream, I saw a sand-hill crane stalking 
along the shore. Into the water I went with the 
suddenly conceived idea that I could catch that 
crane, and, swimming low, I reached the shore, 
about 20 feet from the bird, jumped quickly out 
of the water, made a sudden dash and the bird 



bill's school and mine. 13 

was captured! Once I saw a catfish, gasping for 
air at the surface of water that had been muddied 
by the opening of a sluice-way in a dam. Swim- 
ming up behind the fish, I jambed a hand into 
each gill, and, helped by the fish's tail, I pushed 
it ashore; and it weighed 36 pounds! A friend 
of mine, by the name of Stebbins, once followed 
his dog in a chase after a jack rabbit. The 
rabbit made a wide circle and came back to its 
own trail some distance ahead of the dog, then it 
made a big sidewise jump, and sat looking at the 
dog as it passed by; so intently indeed that 
Stebbins walked up behind the rabbit and took 
it up with his hands. 

I think you will agree with me that my out- 
door school was a wonderful thing. The Land 
of Out-of-Doors! To young people the best 
school and play-house, and to older people an 
endless asylum of delight. 

" The grass so little has to do, 
A sphere of simple green 
With only butterflies to brood 
And bees to entertain. 

" And stir all day to pretty tunes 
The breezes fetch along, 
And hold the sunshine in its lap 
And bow — to everything. 



14 bill's school and mine. 

" And thread the dew all night, like pearls, 
And make itself so fine, 
A duchess were too common 
For such a noticing. 

11 And even when it dies, to pass 
In odors so divine 
As lowly spices gone to sleep, 
Or amulets of pine. 

" And then to dwell in sovereign barns 
And dream the days away, 
The grass so little has to do — 
I wish I were the hay." 



The most important thing, I should say, for 
the success of Bill's fine school is that ample op- 
portunity be given to Bill for every variety of 
play including swimming and skating, and 
wherever possible, boating. It is ridiculous to 
attempt to teach Bill anything without the sub- 
stantial results of play to build upon. Play- 
grounds are the cheapest and, in many respects, 
the best of schools, but they are almost entirely 
lacking in many of our towns which have grown 
to cities in a generation in this great nation of 
villagers. The Boroughs of the Bethlehems, 
for example, have no playground connected with 
a Public School, nor any other public place 
where boys can play ball. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

(This and the following communication are from a small 
paper, printed and published by two Bethlehem boys.) 

We, the editors, have been dragged along back alleys, 
across open sewers, and through rank growths of weed and 
thistle to view the Monocacy meadows to consider the possi- 
bility of their use as a playground or park. We are not 
much impressed with the proposal, the place is apparently 
hopeless, but the park enthusiast could not be touched by 
argument. To our very practical objection that the cost 

i5 



1 6 bill's school and mine. 

would be excessive, he made the foolish reply that there is no 
cost but a saving in using what has hitherto been wasted. 
To our expressed disgust for the open sewers and filth he 
replied that that was beside the question, for, as he said, we 
must sooner or later take care of the filth anyway. But, we 
said, the creek is contaminated above the town. Very well, 
he replied, we have the right to prohibit such contamination. 
But worst of all, in double meaning, was his instant agree- 
ment to our statement that we had our cemeteries* which, 
he said, were really better than any Bethlehem park could be. 

COMMUNICATION. 

Dear Editors: I took a walk along the Monocacy Creek 
on Sunday afternoon and discovered clear water several miles 
above town and a fine skating pond ; but I suppose that you 
and all of your subscribers will have to go to our enterprising 
neighbor, Allentown, to find any well-kept ice to skate on 
this Winter. Most people think that you boys can swim in 
Nature's own water, skate on Nature's own ice, and roam in 
Nature's own woods, but it is absolutely certain that your 
elders must take some care and pains if you town boys are 
to do any of these things. And yet, here in the East, chil- 
dren are said to be brought up (implying care and pains) 
and hogs are said to be raised (implying only feeding). I 
thank the Lord that I was " raised " in the West where 
there are no such false distinctions. 

Your subscriber, F. 

♦The two Moravian cemeteries are really beautiful with their 
stone slabs lying flat on the ground, and their well kept grass and 
trees, and many Bethlehem people use these cemeteries as parks dur- 
ing the spring and summer days. 



bill's school and mine. 17 

P. S. — As I came home covered with beggar-lice and cockle- 
burrs I saw a ring of fire on South Mountain, an annual 
occurrence which has been delayed a whole week this Autumn 
by a flourish of posters in several languages offering One 
Hundred Dollars Reward ! F. 



In these days of steam and electricity we boast 
of having conquered nature. Well, we have got 
to domesticate nature before much else can be ac- 
complished in this country of ours. We have 
got to take care of our brooks and our rivers, of 
our open lands and our wooded hills. We have 
got to do it, and Bill would be better off if we 
took half of the cost of his fine school to meet the 
expense of doing it. When I was a boy I be- 
longed to the Bander-log, but Bill belongs to 
another tribe, the Rats, and there is nothing I 
would like so much to do as to turn Pied Piper 
and lure the entire brood of Bethlehem boys and 
girls to Friedensville* and into that awful chasm 
of crystal water to come back no more, no, not 
even when an awakened civic consciousness had 
made a park of the beautiful Monocacy mead- 
ows and converted the creek into a chain, a regu- 
lar Diamond Necklace of swimming holes. I 
beg the garbage people's pardon for speaking of 

* The site of an abandoned zinc mine, where a few of the Bethle- 
hem boys go to swim. 



1 8 BILL'S school and mine. 

the beautiful Monocacy meadows. I refer to 
what has been and to what might easily continue 
to be. As for the Diamond Necklace, that, of 
course, would have to be above our gas works 
where the small stream of pure tar now joins the 
main stream. 

I know a small river in Kansas which is bor- 
dered by rich bottom lands from one-half to one 
mile in width between beautifully scalloped 
bluffs — where the upland prairie ends.* In early 
days thick covering of grass was everywhere, 
and the clear stream, teeming with life, wound 
its way along a deep channel among scattered 
clusters of large walnut trees and dense groves 
of elm and cotton wood, rippling here and there 
over beds of rock. Now, however, every foot 
of ground, high and low, is mellowed by the 
plow, and the last time I saw the once beautiful 
valley of Wolf River it was as if the whole earth 
had melted with the rains of June, such devasta- 
tion of mud was there ! Surely it requires more 
than the plow to domesticate nature; indeed, 

* The state of Kansas is a prehistoric mud bed now sloping from 
4000 feet above sea level at the western end to 1000 feet above sea 
level at the eastern end, and the streams have eroded deep bluff- 
bounded valleys through the almost bottomless clay and loam. In 
many sections the country is decidedly hilly, and the feature which 
sinks deepest into a native is ■ the sunny stretch of wild meadow ris- 
ing to the sky.' 



bill's school and mine. 19 

since I have lived between the coal-bearing Alle- 
ghenies and the sea, I have come to believe that 
it may require more than the plow and the 
crowded factory and iron furnace, such pesti- 
lence of refuse and filth is here! 

I suppose that I am as familiar with the re- 
quirements of modern industry as any man liv- 
ing, and as ready to tolerate everything that is 
economically wise, but every day as I walk to 
and fro I see our Monocacy Creek covered with 
a scum of tar, and in crossing the river bridge I 
see a half mile long heap of rotting refuse serv- 
ing the Lehigh as a bank on the southern side; 
not all furnace refuse either by any means, but 
nameless stinking stuff cast off by an indifferent 
population and carelessly left in its very midst in 
one long unprecedented panorama of putrescent 
ugliness! And when, on splendid Autumn 
days, the nearby slopes of old South Mountain 
lift the eyes into pure oblivion of these distress- 
ing things, I see again and again a line of fire 
sweeping through the scanty woods. This I 
have seen every Autumn since first I came to 
Bethlehem. 

It is easy to speak in amusing hyperbole of 
garbage heaps and of brooks befouled with tar, 
but to have seen one useless flourish of posters on 



20 bill's school and mine. 

South Mountain in fifteen years! That is be- 
yond any possible touch of humor. It is indeed 
unfortunate that our river is not fit for boys to 
swim in, and it is not, for I have tried it, and I 
am not fastidious either, having lived an amphib- 
ious boyhood on the banks of the muddiest 
river in the world; but it is a positive disgrace 
that our river is not fit to look at, that it is good 
for nothing whatever but to drink; much too 
good, one would think, for people who protect 
the only stretch of woodland that is accessible to 
their boys and girls by a mere flourish of 
posters !* 

I was born in Kansas when its inhabitants 
were largely Indians, and when its greatest re- 
source was wild buffalo skins ; and whatever ob- 
jection you may have to this description of my 
present home-place between the Alleghenies and 
the sea, please do not imagine that I have a 
sophisticated sentimentality towards the Beauties 
of Nature! No, I am still enough of an Indian 
to think chiefly of my belly when I look at a 
stretch of country. In the West I like the sug- 
gestion of hog-and-hominy which spreads for 
miles and miles beneath the sky, and here in the 

♦When these words were written South Bethlehem was supplied 
with untreated water from the Lehigh River. 



bill's school AND MINE. 21 

East I like the promise of pillars of fire and 
smoke and I love the song of steam 1 

Bill's School and Mine! It may seem that I 
have said a great deal about my school, and very 
little about Bill's. But what is Bill's school? 
Surely, Bill's fine school-house and splendid 
teachers, and Bill's good mother are not all there 
is to Bill's school. No, Bill's school is as big as 
all Bethlehem, and in its bigger aspects it is a 
bad school, bad because Bill has no opportunity 
to play as a boy should play, and bad because 
Bill has no opportunity to work as a boy should 
work. 

" F b'en a-kindo musin', as the feller says, and I'm 
About o' the conclusion that they ain't no better time, 
When you come to cypher on it, than the times we used 

to know, 
When we swore our first ' dog-gone-it ' sorto solem'-Hke 

and low. 

" You git my idy, do you ? — little tads, you understand — 
Jes' a wishin', thue and thue you, that you on'y was a MAN. 
Yet here I am this minute, even forty, to a day, 
And fergittin' all that's in it, wishin' jes the other way! " 

I wonder if Bill will "wish the other way" 
when he is a man. Indeed, I wonder if he will 
ever BE a man. If we could only count on that, 
Bill's school would not be our problem. 



In the preface to his book, The Method of Divine 
Government, Physical and Moral, Dr. McCosh admits that 
the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Wherefore, he 
says, " no man should presume to point out all the ways in 
which a God of unbounded resources might govern the 
universe." 
********* 

" As for the matter of lodging. Look at Professor Kirk's 
page 73.* There you will find that in the street dedicated 
in Edinburgh to the memory of the first Bishop of Jerusa- 
lem, in No. 23, there are living 220 persons. In the first 
floor of it live ten families, — forty-nine persons; in the sec- 
ond floor, nine families — fifty four persons — and so on up to 
six floors ; the ground floor being a shop. " In my Father's 
house," says Christ, " are many mansions." Verily, that ap- 
pears to be also the case in some of His Scotch evangelical 
servants' houses here. And modest Dr. McCosh, who will 
not venture to suggest any better arrangement of the uni- 
verse, — has he likewise no suggestion to offer as to the ar- 
rangement of 23 St. James' Street?" 

* Referring to an old social survey, Kirk's Social Politics. 



PLAY AS A TRAINING IN 
APPLICATION. 



Never yet was a boy who dreamed 

of ice-cream sundaes while 

playing ball. 



Play as a training in application! That cer- 
tainly is a paradox; and yet everyone knows that 
play is the first thing in life to give rise to that 
peculiar overwhelming eagerness which alone 
can bring every atom of one's strength into 
action. Ability to focus one's whole mind upon 
an undertaking and to apply one's whole body in 
concentrated effort is what our boys and girls are 
most in need of, and vigorous competitive play 
serves better than anything else, if, indeed, there 
is anything else to create it. 

Intense and eager application! That means 
an escape from laziness and apathy! And eager- 
ness is the only thing in the world that defies 
fatigue. A healthy boy can put forth an amaz- 
ing amount of physical effort and be fresh at the 
end of a day of play. And a man whose habit of 
application is so highly developed that it assumes 
a quality of eagerness and never fails in absolute 
singleness of purpose, is there any limit to what 
such a man can do? 



25 



Whatever you have to do 

do it with all your might— 

if you can! 



THE ENERGIZING OF PLAY. 



Strenuous play leads to strenuous work. 
Play ball! 



Scarcely more than a generation ago every 
American boy came under the spell of hunting 
and fishing; and there is no more powerful in- 
centive to laborious days, nor any anodyne so 
potent for bodily discomfort and hardship ! A 
hunting and fishing boyhood ! Such has been the 
chief source of human energy in this lazy world 
of ours, the chief basis of life-long habit of per- 
sistent and strenuous effort; and the problem of 
educational play is to a great extent the problem 
of finding an effecive substitute for the lure of 
the wild for stimulating young people to intense 
activity. 

The lure of the wild! Alas it is but a poet's 
fancy in this tame world of ours. But our boys 
remain as a perennial race of Wild Indians how- 
ever tame the world may come to be ; and fortu- 
nately they are not dependent upon completely 
truthful externals. The genuine Wild Indian 
becomes a sorry spectacle, and even sickens and 
dies, when he is deprived of his millions of 
square miles. of wild buffalo country; but our 
boy Bill cannot have such an out-of-doors, never 
again as long as the earth shall last. Indeed he 
has no need of such a thing, for if his fancy is 

29 



30 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

stirred by ardent playmates he will chase an 
imaginary stag around a vacant lot all day if 
only there is a mixture of earth and sky and 
greenery to set off his make believe — and eat 
mush and milk when the day is done ! 

Many grown-ups seem to think that mere per- 
mission is now a sufficient condition for play, as 
it was in pioneer and rural days when opportu- 
nity for hunting and fishing completely matched 
the instinctive youthful impulse towards such 
things ; but it is not so. Strenuous play now re- 
quires suggestive example and organization, as 
with our Boy Scouts; and it depends to a very 
great extent upon competitive athletics. 

A dozen large ball fields and two or three 
good-sized swimming pools are, next to his food, 
the most important thing for our boy Bill; and 
they would do more to make him into an ener- 
getic and industrious man than all the rest of his 
school work put together. 



THE DISCIPLINE OF WORK. 



Many good people think of work in 
hopelessly prosaic terms; a summer squad 
of boys of well-to-do or even wealthy 
parents would, in the end, appreciate 
keenly the element of adventure that 
would develop in the digging of a ditch 
by the day. 



The first object of all work — not the principal one, but the 
first and necessary one — is to get food and clothes and lodg- 
ing and fuel. 

But it is quite possible to have too much of all these 
things. I know a great many gentlemen, who eat too large 
dinners; a great many ladies, who have too many clothes. 
I know there is lodging to spare in London, for I have 
several houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know 
there is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to 
pound the roads with, while our men stand idle ; or drink till 
they can't stand, idle, or otherwise. 

RUSKIN. 



Two generations ago school was supple- 
mented by endless opportunity for play, and 
children had to work about the house and farm 
more and more as they grew to maturity. Play 
and work were in those days as plentiful, as sun- 
shine and air, and it is no wonder that educa- 
tional ideals were developed taking no account 
of play and work. But to cling to these old 
ideals at the present time when city children 
have no opportunity to play, when there is an al- 
most complete absence of old fashioned chores 
about the home, when boys never see their 
fathers at work, and when for boys and girls to 
work outside the home is to face the danger of 
reckless exploitation! What a piece of stupid- 
ity! Our entire educational system, primary 
and secondary, collegiate and technical, is sick 
with inconsequential bookishness. 

Yes but we have our Manual Training Schools 
and our college courses in Shop Work and Shop 
Inspection. Away with such scholastic shams! 
The beginnings of manual training must indeed 
be provided for in school ; paper cutting, sewing 
and whittling. But from the absurdity of an 
Academic Epitome of Industry may the good 



33 



34 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

Lord deliver us ! And He will deliver us, never 
fear, for the law of economy is His law too. 

The greatest educational problem of our time 

is how to make use of commercial and 

industrial establishments as schools 

to the extent that they 

are schools. 

The first object of all work is indeed to get 
food and clothes and lodging and fuel, but the 
essence of work is a human discipline as kindly 
and beneficent as the sunshine and the rain, and 
the greatest need of our time is that the discipline 
of work come again to its own in our entire sys- 
tem of education. 

This book is dedicated to the kind of education 

that is proving itself at the University 

of Cincinnati. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



Prairie born; 
Once his feet touch the slope of Western mountain 
The level road they ever more shall spurn. 
If once he drink from snow-pure crystal fountain 
His thirst shall, ever more consuming, burn 
With deepened draughts from common stream. 

Once his eye catch glimpse of more substantial glory 

Than prairie horizon high piled with clouded foam 

His quickened yearning shall inspire old story 

Of unbounded, deathless realms beyond the sunset — Home! 



There were two of us, a prairie-born tender- 
foot in the person of a sixteen-year-old college 
sophomore and the writer.* After months of 
anticipation and planning we hurried away at 
the close of the college term, leaving the prairies 
of Iowa to spend a short vacation in the moun- 
tains; and we arrived in Denver on a perfect, 
cloudless morning in June. 

* The writer has traveled afoot, with knap-sack and sleeping bag, 
and with skillet and coffee can hanging from his belt, as much as 
1200 miles through the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming — 
for fun, 



37 



3 8 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 



Since early daylight we had kept an eager 
watch across the plains to catch a first glimpse 
of the great Front Range of the Rocky Moun- 
tains with its covering of summer snow, and 
after making some purchases of camp supplies 
we climbed to Capitol Hill in Denver to see the 
foot-hills soften to purple and the snow fields 
melt to liquid gold as the crystal day turned to 
crimson glory with the setting of the sun. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



39 







-e> 









agsSW^-- 



^^^^// ■«, 



<&» 



«efi. 



" This is the land that the sunset washes, 
Those are the Banks of the Yellow Sea; 
Where it arose and whither it rushes, 
This is the western mystery." 



40 bill's school and mine. 

Late in the evening we took the train for Love- 
land from which place we were to start on a 
walking trip to Laramie, up in Wyoming. 

In Loveland we purchased a pony and a pack- 
saddle. The pony had never been broken to the 
saddle, and inasmuch as the art of packing has 
always to be learned anew when one has not 
practiced it for several years, both of us were, in 
some respects, as green as the pony, and naturally 
somewhat nervous when we started from Love- 
land. The pony served us well however and at 
the worst only gave us a name for the Bucking 
Horse Pass when we crossed the range of the 
Medicine Bow Mountains from the waters of 
the Grand River to those of the North Platte. 

From Loveland we reached Sprague's Ranch 
in Estes Park,* thirty-five miles away, in two days 
of easy travel over a good stage road, encounter- 
ing a snow squall in the high foot hills which 
left us cold and wet at sundown of the first day. 
In Estes Park we stayed three days, fishing, 
running up to timber line as preliminary exer- 
cise, and writing letters. The writer had spent 
two previous summers in Estes Park near 
Sprague's Ranch in company with friends from 
the University of Kansas. 

* Now Rocky Mountain National Park. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 41 

Camp Acclimatization, 
June 2 1 st. 
My dear little Friend: — 

D. and I reached this place day before yester- 
day. I saw Fred Sprague yesterday. He had 
already learned of our presence in the Park, 
having seen our characteristic hob-nail tracks, 
and, as his mother tells me, he remarked upon 
seeing them that " God's people had come," 
meaning the Kansas boys with whom he became 
acquainted in '86 and '89. 

We have passed thousands of flowers since 
leaving Loveland, white poppies, cactus, blue 
bells, columbine and others more than I can tell. 
The blue bells are of the same kind that you and 
I found near Bloomington several weeks ago. 
It would be very nice if you and I could make 
some of our Saturday excursions in this country. 

I wish I could tell you more of our trip. Of 
course it is scarcely begun as yet, but I know 
pretty well what it will be; hard, for one thing, 
and lonesome, but strangely fascinating. We 
are beginning already to have that attitude 
towards nature which I imagine Indians have, 
namely, the desire to get something to eat out of 
everything we see. [M. had written her brother 
D. at Moraine post office of the pies and cakes 



42 bill's school and mine. 

they were making at home.] This is by no 
means greediness, for a measured appetite is 
essentially incompatible with the conditions of 
Indian life. In fact the only wild animals 
which are not gourmands on occasion are those 
which eat grass. Of course, we are at best only 
Agency Indians, but we shall soon be off our 
reservation. 

Few people realize the utter desolation of 
many parts of the Rocky Mountains; and often 
on my mountain trips, hungry and foot-sore, my 
fancy has turned to what my friend 'Gric* has 
told me of the utterly desolate Funeral Moun- 
tains that border Death Valley in southern Cali- 
fornia, and of the infinite sunshine there. What 
would you think, my little friend, even now 
amid the comforts and joys of home, if you could 
hear a trustworthy account of an actual trip over 
those dreadful Mountains and into that awful 
Valley? 

I hope that the map with the accompanying 
description will help you to a knowledge of the 
geography and geology of this country. I send 
kind regards to your father and mother. 

Your friend, F. 

* See page 46. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 43 

Starting from Estes Park for the Grand River 
country we stopped over night at Camp Desola- 
tion in Windy Gulch, an enormous amphi- 
theater rising above timber line on the north, 
east, and west, and opening to the south into Big 
Thompson Canyon. The mouth of the Gulch is 
dammed by the lateral moraine of an ancient 
Thompson glacier and behind this dam is a 
level, marshy stretch with a few green spruce 
and thickets of aspen, black alder and mountain 
willow. Near timber line also is a scattered 
fringe of green with dots of white. All the rest 
is a desolate stretch of burned timber. 

Trailing to the head of Windy Gulch in the 
morning we gained the summit of Thompson 
Ridge which we followed in a northwesterly 
direction for about twelve miles ; then we circled 
around the head of Big Thompson river and 
went down to Camp at the head of the Cache la 
Poudre river, precisely on the Continental 
Divide in Milner Pass about two hundred feet 
below timber line with Specimen Mountain im- 
mediately to the north of us. 



44 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

Specimen Mountain Camp, 
June 24th. 

My Dear B: — 

D. and I are going to run down to Grand Lake 
settlement to-morrow for bacon and flour so I 
write this to-day. I have been in camp all 
morning cooking and mending while D. has been 
looking for sheep up in the crater of Specimen 
Mountain. He saw two and shot without effect. 
Specimen Mountain is an extinct volcano and 
sheep come to the crater to lick. I have seen as 
many as a hundred and fifty sheep there at dif- 
ferent times during the four trips that I have 
made to this reigon, but I have hunted them only 
one day (the first) of the twenty-five that I have 
spent in this camp — without success, of course. 

Flowers in profusion are found at these alti- 
tudes already where the shrinking snow drifts 
have exposed the ground to the warm June sun, 
but under the drifts it is yet the dead of winter. 
As the season advances the snow recedes, and 
each newly uncovered strip of ground passes with 
exuberant haste through a cycle of spring. 

We came over from Estes Park yesterday and 
the day before. At one point I carried the 
horse's pack about a quarter of a mile on account 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 45 

of steepness of trail and depth of snow, leaving 
the pony under D's guidance to wallow through 
as best she could. We shall, no doubt, have 
some hard work getting out of the Grand River 
valley to the north over the Medicine Bow but 
we intend to keep at it. We are, of course, likely 
to get cold and wet, tired and hungry. In fact, 
I am neither very dry nor very warm now as I 
write, for it is half snowing and half raining; 
nor hungry ( ?) for I have just eaten three slices 
of bacon, half a corn cake eight inches in 
diameter and an inch thick, with bacon gravy 
made with flour and water, and nearly a quart of 
strong coffee of syrupy sweetness. I do wish D. 
had killed that sheep this morning! We hope 
to get some trout to-morrow out of Grand River, 
but to see the sheets of water which are being 
shed off the range from rain and melting snow 
makes one feel uncertain of the trout fishing. I 
will close for this time and put this into my 
knapsack. To-morrow D. and I will get our 
"walkins" on bright and early, and pack it to 
Grand Lake. This is a tough country beyond 
imagination. 

Yours sincerely, F. 



4^ BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

When trailing above timber line on our way 
to Specimen Mountain and subsequently we 
were on snow much of the time; below timber 
line at high altitudes we contended about equally 
with snow and fallen timber; and at middle alti- 
tudes where the timber is heavy and where fires 
have been frequent and disastrous the fallen 
timber alone is quite enough to make travel 
troublesome. Mud and water, fallen and fall- 
ing, we encountered everywhere, but without 
much concern. The greatest vexation to the 
amateur traveler in the Rockies is to slip off a 
log in trying to cross a stream, and thus get wet 
all over, when if one had been reasonable, one 
might have been wet only to the middle. An 
awkward comrade of '89 did this so many times 
that it became a standing joke; but 'Gric, as we 
called him, that is to say A gric la, after his 
father "Farmer" Funston of Kansas, developed 
grit enough to take him through Death Valley 
in southern California, to take him, all alone, 
1,600 miles down the Yukon River in an open 
boat and across 200 miles of unexplored country 
during the winter night to the shores of the 
Arctic Ocean, to take him into the Cuban army, 
where he received three serious wounds, and 
finally to take him through the Philippines 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 47 

with our Volunteer Army where he captured 
Aguinaldo. 

From Specimen Mountain Camp in Milner 
Pass we made our way to Grand River over an 
extremely difficult trail, nearly breaking our 
pony's leg in the fallen timber, and, finding it 
impossible to reach Grand Lake by the river 
trail without wetting our pack, we went into 
(Mosquito) camp and did our week's washing. 
The next day we left our pony, and made a flying 
round trip of thirty miles to the settlement. The 
next morning, hoping to escape the mosquitoes, 
we moved camp several miles up stream and in 
the afternoon we climbed to the summit of one 
of the high spurs of a nameless* peak in the 
range of the Medicine Bow. We got back to 
camp late in the evening in a sharp rain, which 
continued all night. 

The next morning promised fair weather, and 
after some hesitation, we packed up for the trip 
over to North Park. Starting at eight o'clock 
we reached the deserted mining camp, Lulu, at 
eleven, having forded Grand River seven times, 

* A volcanic mass of rugged spurs radiating from a great central 
core; points and ridges rising, beautifully red, from immense fields 
of snow. D. and the writer call it Mt. McDonald, but having made 
no survey, the purely sentimental report which we could send to 
the map makers in Washington would not suffice as a record there. 



48 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

the water of it ice cold and swift as an arrow. 
We then began to climb the range, the summit 
of which we reached at three o'clock at the pass 
of the Bucking Horse far above timber line. At 
four o'clock we began the descent into the valley 
of the Michigan fork of the North Platte. The 
rain, until now fitful, became steady and we, 
determined to reach a good camping place, kept 
our pony at a half-trot until eight o'clock, when 
we found a deserted cabin. We were too im- 
patiently hungry to make biscuit, which we ordi- 
narily baked in the frying pan before cooking 
our bacon, so we made our supper of graham 
mush, bacon, bacon gravy and coffee. Next 
morning we found to our dismay that our baking 
powder had been left at the Bucking Horse — 
and no wonder, for our pack had been strewn 
for a quarter of a mile along the trail — so we 
were reduced to mush again for breakfast. 



Gould's Ranch, 
July 7th. 
My Dear B: 

We have just returned from a week's hunt in 
the Medicine Bow Mountains east of here. We 
saw elk, killed a deer, and spent the Fourth of 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 49 

July on a prominent but nameless peak from 
which we got a splendid view. 

****** 

After breakfast at Camp Mush, Mr. E. B. 
Gould, a neighboring cattle rancher who has no 
cattle, was attracted by the smoke of our camp- 
fire, and coming up to see us, he invited us to his 
shanty to eat venison. We went. We have now 
been with him a week and we are starting on our 
second carcass. 

Gould lives by hunting and trapping, and by 
odd work in the Park during the haying season. 
He came to this country years ago with a hunt- 
ing party and has been hunting ever since. 
Several years ago he took up a claim in the ex- 
treme southeastern corner of North Park con- 
veniently near to hunting grounds in the Medi- 
cine Bow. He gave up his claim, for good, a 
year ago, and made an overland trip to New 
Mexico. That did not satisfy him either, so 
now he is back in his old shanty again. He 
thinks we are the toughest "tender-foots" he 
ever saw. He approves of us, there is no doubt 
about that, and he has pulled up his stakes to 
travel with us just for the pleasure of our com- 
pany! He takes great interest in D's knowledge 
of bugs, and D. and he are both real hunters each 



50 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

according to his experience. Before we fell in 
with Gould I could persuade D. to wanton exer- 
tion in the way of mountain climbing but now I 
am in the minority, but the hunters propose, with 
a flourish, the scaling of every peak that comes 
in sight. 

I had a spell of mountain fever just before the 
Fourth and Gould dosed me with sage brush tea, 
the vilest concoction I ever had to take. 

Gould is not accustomed to walk except when 
actually hunting, so he has a riding horse, and a 
trusty old pack animal whose minimum name is 
" G — d — you Jack," and whose maximum name 
(and load) is indeterminate. Gould is going 
with us to spend a week in the Range of the 
Rabbit's Ear, far to the west across North Park. 
He has an old wagon which, if it holds together, 
will save D. and me some tedious steps across the 
desert, for indeed this " park " is a desert. We 
shall pass through Walden, the metropolis and 
supply station of the Park. 

Yours, F. 



From D's Mother. 
My precious boy: 

I trust you will excuse me for using this paper 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 5* 

but I am up stairs, and no one [is] here to bring 
me any other. They tell me I need not wonder 
that we do not hear from you and I shall try not 
to be disappointed if we do not hear for a while. 
Nevertheless my dear boy, the uncertainty I feel 
in regard to your safety will make a letter very 
welcome indeed. Perhaps I would have more 
courage if I were strong. For five days I have 
been very uncomfortable. I am sitting up some 
today for the first [time] and hope soon to be 
well as usual. 

We were exceedingly glad to hear from you 
from Grand Lake. I cannot, however, say that 
the account of your experience by stone slide* 
and river has lessened my anxiety. I am writ- 
ing now, Thursday, in bed. I have been quite 
poorly again. We shall not look now for a letter 
from you but hope to see you face to face before 
many days. May God bless and keep you! 
Give our love to Mr. F. All join me in ten- 
derest love to you. 

Your devoted mother. 

* The crater of Specimen Mountain is worn away on one side 
by water, and the crater now forms the head of a ragged gulch. 
Near the head of this gulch is a slope of loose stone, as steep as 
loose stone can lie, which has a vertical height of 1500 or 2000 feet. 



52 bill's school and mine. 

At Walden we laid in a fresh supply of flour 
and bacon, and canned goods, especially canned 
fruit, to last us while we stayed with the wagon. 
We then pushed on to the west, striking camp on 
the West Fork of the North Platte, where we 
stayed two nights. Here we tried hard a third 
time for trout without success, but we turned off 
the water from an irrigating ditch and captured 
a large number of "squaw fish" (suckers). 

From Camp Chew we made our way well up 
into the foothills of the Range of the Rabbit's 
Ear, and then packed our animals, minimum 
Jack and our pony, and pushed up the range over 
the worst trail we had yet encountered, through 
an absolute wilderness of fallen timber. Rain 
with fog set in as we approached timber line, 
and we were forced to go into camp early to 
wait for morning. Morning came with fog and 
rain, and we spent the entire day hunting trail, 
only to go into camp again towards evening. 
The next day, however, came clear and we made 
our way over the range, through Frying Pan 
Meadow, and reached camp down on Elk river 
towards evening without difficulty. We found 
good fishing here at last and great numbers of 
deer but no elk. After three rainy days in Elk 
River Campy one of which was spent jerking 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



53 







Looking North Across Specimen Mountain 
Stone Slide. 



54 bill's school and mine. 

venison of D.'s killing, we packed up and made 
the return trip over the range in one day of hard 
travel, going into camp by the shore of a shallow 
pond well out on the barren level of North Park. 
The next morning we parted company with 
Gould, and in two days we made sixty stage road 
miles across North Park and over the northern 
portion of the Medicine Bow Mountains to 
Woods post office at the edge of the Laramie 
plains, twenty-five miles from Laramie. 

We had intended walking through to Lara- 
mie, but ninety miles and two mountain ranges 
in three days, not to mention the writer's terribly 
blistered feet, had temporarily taken some of the 
ambition out of us, and after some fine diplomacy 
D. and the writer each found that the other was 
willing to descend to stage coach riding. We 
accordingly sold our fine little pony for five 
dollars, packed our outfit in a compact bundle 
which we wrapped in our small tent (which had 
been used as a smoke-house for curing venison at 
Elk- River Camp), and took the stage for 
Laramie. 

At Laramie we took the train for home, and 
with eyes eagerly awake we watched for hun- 
dreds of miles an increasing luxuriance of vege- 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



55 



v:.u. 







In the Range of the Rabbit's Ear. 



56 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

tation which reached its climax in the marvel- 
ously rich, endless, undulating fields of eastern 
Nebraska and Iowa: 

This is the land that the sunset washes, 
These are the Waves of the Yellow Sea ; 
Where it arose and whither it rushes, 
This is the western mystery. 

We had been away from home for thirty-three 
days, and in the mountains for thirty-one sleeps 
— Indians reckon by sleeps ; and we had tramped 
more than three hundred and fifty miles from 
Loveland to the edge of the Laramie plains. A 
large portion of the time was spent at high alti- 
tudes where the weather is not lamb-like in June, 
and no small portion of the three hundred and 
fifty miles was mud and water, snow and fallen 
timber, through a country as rough, perhaps, as 
is to be found anywhere, and as interesting. 
The only way to study Geography is with the 
feet! No footless imagination can realize the 
sublimity of western Mountain and Plain. 
Nothing but a degree of hardship can measure 
their wide-spread chaos and lonely desolation, 
and only the freshened eagerness of many morn- 
ings can perceive their matchless glory. 

We reached home weather-beaten almost be- 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



$7 







Near Frying Pan Meadow. 



58 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

yond recognition, but in robust health, especially 
D., who had actually gained in weight during 
the trip. From the railroad station we carried 
our outfit, and venison, two miles to the college 
grounds, reaching D.'s home about midnight. 

Here our madly exuberant spirits were sud- 
denly checked by finding that the illness of D.'s 
mother had become extremely serious. How- 
ever she was determined to see us both — to give 
a last Approval. 

" We never know how high we are 
Till we are called to rise ; 
And then, if we are true to plan, 
Our statures touch the skies. 



<< 



The heroism we recite 
Would be a daily thing, 

Did not ourselves the cubits warp 
For fear to be a king." 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 59 

After four days D.'s mother died. It fell to 
B. and F. to make a sculptor's plaster mask, and 
photographs ; and to F. to watch overnight — and 
hasten to the woods in the morning. 

" The bustle in a house 
The morning after death 
Is solemnest of industries 
Enacted upon earth. 

" The sweeping up the heart 
And putting love away 
We shall not want to use again 
Until Eternity." 



6o bill's school and mine. 



A beautiful Campanile now stands on the 
college campus erected in memory of D.'s 
mother by the state of Iowa; and from this 
memory-tower a chime of bells 

Greets 

Those who pass in joy 

And those who pass in sorrow; 

As we have passed, 

Our time. 



THE USES OF HARDSHIP. 



" Superiority to fate 
Is difficult to learn. 
Tis not conferred on any, 
But possible to earn 
A pittance at a time, 
Until, to her surprise, 
The soul with strict economy 
Subsists till Paradise." 



Where is the boy who would not 
wish to be — hard as nails! 



" Did you chance, my friends, any of you, to see, the other 
day, the 83rd number of the Graphic, with the picture of the 
Queen's concert in it? All the fine ladies sitting so trimly, 
and looking so sweet, and doing the whole duty of woman — 
wearing their fine clothes gracefully; and the pretty singer, 
white- throated, warbling " Home sweet home " to them, so 
morally, and melodiously! Here was yet to be our ideal of 
virtuous life, thought the Graphic! Surely we are safe back 
with our virtues in satin slippers and lace veils — and our 
Kingdom of Heaven is come with observation ! " 

(The author, in using this quotation from Ruskin, has 
many times been led to declare that he is not wholly pro- 
German as it certainly would appear if he were to complete 
the quotation by giving Ruskin's next paragraph relating to 
East London where a Kingdom not of Heaven is come, also 
with observation.) 



Ruskin has said that the children of the rich 
often get the worst education to be had for 
money, whereas the children of the poor often 
get the best education for nothing. And the 
poor man's school is hardship. But the school of 
hardship is not for those who love luxury, and 
for the poverty stricken it is not a school — it is 
a Juggernaut! 

It is generally admitted that well-to-do Amer- 
ican parents are too indulgent towards their chil- 
dren. However this may be, many an American 
father is determined that his sons shall not go 
through what he himself went through as a boy, 
forgetting that the hardships of his youth were 
largely the hardships of pioneer life which have 
vanished forever. No boy with good stuff in 
him and with a fair education unmixed with 
extravagant habits of living can possibly have 
more hardship nowadays than is good for him. 
Every young man must sooner or later stand by 
himself; and hardship, which in its essence is to 
be thrown on one's own resources, is the best 
school. 

But the most alluring school of hardship, a 
sort of Summer School of the University of 

63 



64 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

Hard Knocks, is a walking trip into the moun- 
tains to the regions of summer snow. The hard- 
ships of such a trip are of the old old type, the 
facing of all kinds of weather and the hunting 
for food, and they waken a thousand-fold deeper 
response than the most serious hunt for a job in 
a modern city. 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

We now face educational problems which school 
men alone cannot solve." 

Sir Henry Armstrong. 



Denmark Hill, April ist, 1871. 
My Friends: 

It cannot but be pleasing to us to reflect, this day, that if 
we are often foolish enough to talk English without under- 
standing it, we are often wise enough to talk Latin without 
knowing it. For this month retains its pretty Roman name, 
which means the month of Opening ; of the light in the days, 
and the life in the leaves, and of the voices of birds, and of 
the hearts of men. 

And being the month of Manifestation, it is pre-eminently 
the month of Fools; — for under the beatific influence of 
moral sunshine, or Education, the Fools always come out first. 

But what is less pleasing to reflect upon, this spring morn- 
ing, is, that there are some kinds of education which may be 
described, not as moral sunshine, but as moral moonshine; 
and that, under these, Fools come out both First — and Last. 

We have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on 
this one point, that we will have education for all men and 
women now, and for all girls and boys that are to be. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more desirable, if only we determine 
also what kind of education we are to have. It is taken for 
granted that any education must be good ; — that the more of 
it we get, the better; that bad education only means little 
education ; and that the worst we have to fear is getting none. 
Alas that is not at all so. Getting no education is by no 
means the worst thing that can happen to us. The real thing 
to be feared is getting a bad one. 

Ruskin. 



The recent* exchange of visits between Penn- 
sylvanians and Wisconsinites has resulted in the 
organization of an association for the carrying 
out of the Wisconsin Idea in Pennsylvania; but 
the New York Evening Post, in commenting 
upon the Pennsylvania version of the Wisconsin 
Idea, calls attention to the fact that in Wisconsin 
the idea is carried out by public agencies, 
whereas the Pennsylvania version is to be exe- 
cuted privately! The Evening Post did not, in- 
deed, say execute; the word is introduced here 
under license because it so exactly conveys the 
meaning of the Posfs criticism. 

Why is it that so many good people take up 
things, like the Boy Scout movement, privately, 
and forget their duty to help make the public 
school responsive to p resent day needs ? How can 
we be so ineffectively good as to enthuse over 
Mrs. So-and-so's out-of-the-city movement for 
children, untroubled by the utter lack of response 
to such evident necessities on the part of a semi- 
public institution like Girard College? The 
trouble is — and we may thank God for the good 

♦This was written in 1913, and it refers to the interest shown, at 
that time, by a group of Philadelphians in the wide educational 
activities of the University of Wisconsin. 

67 



68 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

of it! — that we are all of us steeped in romance. 
There is more of the Adventurer than of the 
Citizen in the best of us, and we have never 
learned to do things for ourselves together. We 
still have the loyal but lazy habit of looking ex- 
pectantly for a King, and what we get is a Phila- 
delphia Ring, the Lowest Circle in the Inferno 
of the Worst; and all the while our business men 
and manufacturers stop growing at a stage which 
the old Greeks called idiocy,* and many who 
have leisure branch off in their growth into a 
hopeless phase of Knight Errantry, trying to do 
good things privately! 

The seven wonders of the world all fade into 
insignificance in comparison with one great fact 
in modern government, a fact so fundamental 
that we seldom think of it, namely, the great fact 
of taxation. Funds sufficient to meet every 
public need of the community flow automat- 
ically into the public treasury. This is indeed 
a very remarkable thing, but it seems almost 
ludicrous when we consider that wasteful ex- 
penditure of public funds is the universal rule, 
and that good people everywhere are struggling 
to do public things privately! Was there ever 
before two such horns to a dilemma? Fog 

* Among the ancient Greeks an idiot was one who thought only 
of his private affairs, a privately minded man. 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 69 

horns, grown inwardly on every American's 
head! When a city of 10,000 people has an 
annual school budget of $60,000, it is evident 
that everything can be done that needs to be 
done for the schooling of children. 

I believe that the school day should be in- 
creased to 8 hours, the school week to 6 days, 
and the school year to 12 months; with elastic 
provision for home work and out-of-town visit- 
ing. I believe that school activities should in- 
clude a wide variety of simple hand work, and a 
great deal of out-door play, with ample provision 
for the things that are done by Boy Scouts and 
Camp Fire Girls; and when children are old 
enough and strong enough to begin their voca- 
tional training, their school activities should be 
combined with work in office and factory. Let 
no one imagine that such a program is imprac- 
ticable ; for, in the city, school is the sum of all 
influences outside the home, and the school day 
is now more than eight hours, the school week 
is more than six days, and school lasts the whole 
year through; these are the facts, say what you 
will; and everything is in a dreadful state of 
confusion — excepting only book work. 



70 bill's school and mine. 

It is time for us to think of the 

public school as including everything that 

makes for the efficient 

organization and orderly 

control of the juvenile 

world. 

Any narrower conception is hopeless in a mod- 
ern city. 

There is however a widespread and trouble- 
some misunderstanding of educational values. 
Imagine a teacher taking his youngsters on a hike 
two or three times a week all winter long! 
Every parent, hoping for his children to escape 
the necessity of work, would howl in stupid crit- 
icism, " Is that what I send my children to school 
for?" And some School Superintendents have the 
point of view of the excessively teachy teacher, 
who, in a recent discussion of the Boy Scout 
idea, admitted that cross-country hikes would 
be a good thing, provided something were asso- 
ciated with them to justify them, and this some- 
thing was understood to be bookish ! As to voca- 
tional training, on the other hand, we must 
reckon with the manufacturer who will not train 
workmen for his competitors but who expects 
his competitors to train workmen for him. And 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 7 1 

we must also reckon with the ministerial mem- 
ber of the schoolboard who meets a proposal for 
vocational training with the question "How 
then will you educate for life?" 

" Ich ging im Walde 
So fuer mich hin, 
Und nichts zu suchen 
Das war mein Sinn." 

The youngster who goes on a hike for nothing 
will get everything, and to be fit for service is to 
be fit for life. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE 

This essay is a sticker, and if any particular reader does 
not like it he can leave it alone; but there is an increasing 
number of young men in this world who must study science 
whether they like it or not, and this essay is intended to ex- 
plain this remarkable and in some respects distressing fact. 

The point of view which is set forth in this essay is very 
widely separated from what is popularly called science, as 
explained in the following essay on Education after the War. 



Grau theurer Freund ist alle Theorie 
Und griin des Lebens goldener Baum. 

Goethe. 



Everyone realizes the constraint that is placed 
upon the lives of men by the physical necessities 
of the world in which we live, and although in 
one way this constraint is more and more re- 
lieved with the progress of the sciences, in an- 
other way it becomes more and more exacting. 
It is indeed easier to cross the Atlantic Ocean 
now than it was in Leif Ericsson's time, but con- 
sider the discipline of the shop, and above all 
consider the rules of machine design! Could 
even the hardy Norsemen have known anything 
as uncompromisingly exacting as these? 

Every person I have ever talked with, old or 
young, theorist or practician, student-in-general 
or specialist in whatever line, has exhibited more 
or less distinctly a certain attitude of impatience 
towards the exactions of this or that phase of the 
precise modes of thought of the physical sci- 
ences. 

" Da wird der Geist Euch wohl dressiert 
In spanische Stiefeln eingeschnuert." 

It is no wonder that easy-going believers in 
liberal education have always looked with horror 
on the sciences, very much as softened men and 

75 



76 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

women look upon work. Liberalism means 
freedom, and "liberalism in education is the 
freedom of development in each individual of 
that character and personality which is his true 
nature." All this I accept in a spirit of opti- 
mism, believing men's true natures to be good; 
but there are phases of education which have 
little directly to do with character and person- 
ality, and I call to your attention this conception 
of liberalism in education, in order that I may 
turn sharply away from it as an incomplete con- 
ception which, to a great extent, excludes the 
sciences. Indeed, I wish to speak of a condition 
in education which is the antithesis of freedom. 
I wish to explain the teaching of the sciences as 
a mode of constraint, as an impressed construc- 
tive discipline without which no freedom is pos- 
sible in our dealings with physical things. I 
wish to characterize the study of elementary sci- 
ence as a reorganization of the workaday mind 
of a young man as complete as the pupation of an 
insect; and I wish to emphasize the necessity of 
an exacting constraint as the essential condition 
of this reorganization. 

There is a kind of salamander, the axolotl, 
which lives a tad-pole like youth, never chang- 
ing to the adult form unless a stress of dry 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 77 

weather annihilates his watery world; but he 
lives always and reproduces his kind as a tad- 
pole. And a very funny-looking tadpole he is, 
with his lungs hanging as feathery tassels from 
the sides of his head. When the aquatic home 
of the axolotl dries up, he quickly develops a 
pair of internal lungs, lops off his tassels and 
embarks on a new mode of life on land. So it 
is with our young men who are to develop be- 
yond the tadpole stage, they must meet with 
quick and responsive inward growth that new 
and increasing " stress of dryness," as many are 
wont to call our modern age of science and 
organized industry. 

Stress of dryness! Indeed no flow of humor 
is to be found in the detached impersonalities 
of the sciences, and if we are to understand the 
characteristics of physical science we must turn 
our attention to things which lead inevitably to 
an exacting and rigid mathematical philosophy. 
It certainly is presumptive to tell a reader that 
he must turn his attention to such a thing, but 
there is no other way; the best we can do is to 
choose the simplest path. Let us therefore con- 
sider the familiar phenomena of motion. 

The most prominent aspect of all phenomena 
is motion. In that realm of nature which is not 



78 bill's school and mine. 

of man's devising* motion is universal. In the 
other realm of nature, the realm of things 
devised, motion is no less prominent. Every 
purpose of our practical life is accomplished by 
movements of the body and by directed move- 
ments of tools and mechanisms, such as the swing 
of scythe and flail, and the studied movements of 
planer and lathe from which are evolved the 
strong-armed steam shovel and the deft-fingered 
loom. 

The laws of motion. Every one has a sense of 
the absurdity of the idea of reducing the more 
complicated phenomena of nature to an orderly 
system of mechanical law. To speak of motion 
is to call to mind first of all the phenomena that 
are associated with the excessively complicated, 
incessantly changing, turbulent and tumbling 
motion of wind and water. These phenomena 
have always had the most insistent appeal to us, 
they have confronted us everywhere and always, 

* Science as young people study it has two chief aspects, or in 
other words, it may be roughly divided into two parts, namely, 
the study of the things which come upon us, as it were, and the 
study of the things which we deliberately devise. The things that 
come upon us include weather phenomena and every aspect and 
phase of the natural world, the things we cannot escape; and the 
things we devise relate chiefly to the serious work of the world, the 
things we laboriously build and the things we deliberately and 
patiently seek. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 79 

and life is an unending contest with their for- 
tuitous diversity, which rises only too often to 
irresistible sweeps of destruction in fire and 
flood, and in irresistible crash of collision and 
collapse where all things mingle in one dread 
fluid confusion! The laws of motion! Con- 
sider the awful complexity of a disastrous tor- 
nado or the dreadful confusion of a railway 
wreck, and understand that what we call the laws 
of motion, although they have a great deal to do 
with the ways in which we think, have very little 
to do with the phenomena of naure. The laws 
of motion! There is indeed a touch of arro- 
gance in such a phrase with its unwarranted sug- 
gestion of completeness and universality, and yet 
the ideas which constitute the laws of motion 
have an almost unlimited extent of legitimate 
range, and these ideas must be possessed with a 
perfect precision if one is to acquire any solid 
knowledge whatever of the phenomena of motion. 
The necessity of precise ideas. Herein lies the 
impossibility of compromise and the necessity of 
coercion and constraint; one must think so and 
so, there is no other way. And yet there is 
always a conflict in the mind of even the most 
willing student because of the constraint which 
precise ideas place upon our vivid and primi- 



80 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

tively adequate sense of physical things; this 
conflict is perennial and it is by no means a one- 
sided conflict between mere crudity and refine- 
ment, for refinement ignores many things. In- 
deed, precise ideas not only help to form* our 
sense of the world in which we live but they 
inhibit sense as well, and their rigid and un- 
challenged rule would be indeed a stress of 
dryness. 

The laws of motion. We return again and 
yet again to the subject, for one is not to be de- 
terred therefrom by any concession of inade- 
quacy, no, nor by any degree of respect for the 
vivid youthful sense of those things which to suit 
our narrow purpose must be stripped completely 
bare. It is unfortunate, however, that the most 
familiar type of motion, the flowing of water or 
the blowing of the wind, is bewilderingly use- 
less as a basis for the establishment of the simple 
and precise ideas which are called the "laws of 
motion," and which are the most important of 
the fundamental principles of physics. These 
ideas have in fact grown out of the study of the 
simple phenomena which are associated with 
the motion of bodies in bulk without perceptible 
change of form, the motion of rigid bodies, so 
called. 

* See discussion of Bacon's New Engine on page 88. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 81 

Before narrowing down the scope of the dis- 
cussion, however, let us illustrate a very general 
application of the simplest idea of motion, the 
idea of velocity. Every one has, no doubt, an 
idea of what is meant by the velocity of the wind ; 
and a sailor, having what he calls a ten-knot 
wind, knows that he can manage his boat with a 
certain spread of canvas and that he can accom- 
plish a certain portion of his voyage in a given 
time; but an experienced sailor, although he 
speaks glibly of a ten-knot wind, belies his speech 
by taking wise precaution against every conceiv- 
able emergency. He knows that a ten-knot 
wind is by no means a sure or a simple thing with 
its incessant blasts and whirls; and a sensitive 
anemometer, having more regard for minutiae 
than any sailor, usually registers in every wind a 
number of almost complete but excessively 
irregular stops and starts every minute and varia- 
tions of direction that sweep round half the 
horizon! We must evidently direct our atten- 
tion to something simpler than the wind. 

Wer will was Lebendig's erkennen und beschreiben 
Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben. 

Let us, therefore, consider the drawing of a 
wagon or the propulsion of a boat. It is a famil- 



82 bill's school and mine. 

iar experience that effort is required to start a 
body moving and that continued effort is re- 
quired to maintain the motion. Certain very 
simple facts as to the nature and effects of this 
effort were discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, and 
on the basis of these facts Newton formulated 
the laws of motion. 

The effort required to start a body or to keep it moving is 
called force. Thus, if one starts a box sliding along a table 
one is said to exert a force on the box. The same effect 
might be accomplished by interposing a stick between the hand 
and the box, in which case one would exert a force on the 
stick and the stick in its turn would exert a force on the box. 
We thus arrive at the notion of force action between inani- 
mate bodies, between the stick and the box in this case, and 
Newton pointed out that the force action between two 
bodies A and B always consists of two equal and opposite 
forces, that is to say, if body A exerts a force on B, then B 
exerts an equal and opposite force on A, or, to use Newton's 
words, action is equal to reaction and in a contrary direction. 

In leading up to this statement one might con- 
sider the force with which a person pushes on 
the box and the equal and opposite force with 
which the box pushes back on the person, but if 
one does not wish to introduce the stick as an 
intermediary, it is better to speak of the force 
with which the hand pushes on the box, and the 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 83 

equal and opposite force with which the box 
pushes back an the hand, because in discussing 
physical phenomena it is of the utmost im- 
portance to pay attention only to impersonal 
things. Indeed our modern industrial life, in 
bringing men face to face with an entirely un- 
precedented array of intricate mechanical and 
physical problems, demands of every one a great 
and increasing amount of impersonal thinking, 
and the precise and rigorous modes of thought 
of the physical sciences are being forced upon 
widening circles of men with a relentless insis- 
tence — all of which it was intended to imply by 
referring to the " stress of dryness " which over- 
takes the little axolotl in his contented existence 
as a tadpole. 

When we examine into the conditions under which a body 
starts to move and the conditions under which a body once 
started is kept in motion, we come across a very remarkable 
fact, if we are careful to consider every force which acts upon 
the body, and this remarkable fact is that the forces which 
act upon a body at rest are related to each other in precisely 
the same way as the forces which act upon a body moving 
steadily along a straight path. Therefore it is convenient to 
consider, first the relation between the forces which act upon 
a body at rest, or upon a body in uniform motion, and second 
the relation between the forces which act upon a body which 
is starting or stopping or changing the direction of its motion. 



84 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

Suppose a person A were to hold a box in mid-air. To do 
so it would of course be necessary for him to push upwards 
on the box so as to balance the downward pull of the earth, 
the weight of the box as it is called. If another person B 
were to take hold of the box and pull upon it in any direction, 
A would have to exert an equal pull on the box in the oppo- 
site direction to keep it stationary. The forces which act 
upon a stationary body are always balanced. 

Every one, perhaps, realizes that what is here said about 
the balanced relation of the forces which act upon a stationary 
box, is equally true of the forces which act on a box similarly 
held in a steadily moving railway car or boat. Therefore, 
the forces which act upon a body which moves steadily along 
a straight path are balanced. 

This is evidently true when the moving body is surrounded 
on all sides by things which are moving along with it, as in 
a car or a boat ; but how about a body which moves steadily 
along a straight path but which is surrounded by bodies 
which do not move along with it? Everyone knows that 
some active agent such as a horse or a steam engine must pull 
steadily upon such a body to keep it in motion. If left to 
itself such a moving body quickly comes to rest. Many have, 
no doubt, reached this further inference from experience, 
namely, that the tendency of moving bodies to come to rest 
is due to the dragging forces, or friction, with which sur- 
rounding bodies act upon a body in motion. Thus a moving 
boat is brought to rest by the drag of the water when the 
propelling force ceases to act; a train of cars is brought to 
rest because of the drag due to friction when the pull of the 
locomotive ceases ; a box which is moving across a table comes 
to rest when left to itself, because of the drag due to friction 
between the box and the table. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 8 5 

We must, therefore, always consider two distinct forces 
when we are concerned with a body which is kept in motion, 
namely, the propelling force due to some active agent such 
as a horse or an engine, and the dragging force due to sur- 
rounding bodies. Newton pointed out that when a body is 
moving steadily along a straight path, the propelling force is 
always equal and opposite to the dragging force. Therefore, 
The forces which act upon a body which is stationary, or 
which is moving uniformly along a straight path, are bal- 
anced forces. 

Let us now consider the relation between the forces which 
act upon a body which is changing its speed, upon a body 
which is being started or stopped, for example. Everyone 
has noticed how a mule strains at his rope when starting a 
canal boat, especially if the boat is heavily loaded, and how 
the boat continues to move for a long time after the mule 
ceases to pull. In the first case, the pull of the mule greatly 
exceeds the drag of the water, and the speed of the boat is in- 
creasing; in the second case, the drag of the water of course 
exceeds the pull of the mule, for the mule is not pulling at all, 
and the speed of the boat is decreasing. When the speed of a 
body is changing, the forces which act on the body are un- 
balanced. We may conclude therefore that the effect of an 
unbalanced force acting on a body is to change the velocity of 
the body, and it is evident that the longer the unbalanced 
force continues to act the greater the change of velocity. 
Thus if the mule ceases to pull on a canal boat for one second 
the velocity of the boat will be but slightly reduced by the 
unbalanced drag of the water, whereas if the mule ceases to 
pull for two seconds the decrease of velocity will be much 
greater. In fact the change of velocity due to a given un- 



86 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

balanced force is proportional to the time that the force con- 
tinues to act. This is exemplified by a body falling under 
the action of the unbalanced gravity pull of the earth; after 
one second the falling body will have gained a certain amount 
of velocity (about 32 feet per second), after two seconds it 
will have made a total gain of twice as much velociy (about 
64 feet per second), and so on. 

Since the velocity produced by an unbalanced force is pro- 
portional to the time that the force continues to act, it is evi- 
dent that the effect of the force should be specified as so-much- 
velocity-produced-per-second, exactly as in the case of earning 
money, the amount one earns is proportional to the length of 
time that one continues to work, and we always specify one's 
earning capacity as so-much-money-earned-per-day. 

Everyone knows what it means to give an easy pull or a 
hard pull on a body. That is to say, we all have the ideas of 
greater and less as applied to forces. Everybody knows also 
that if a mule pulls hard on a canal boat, the boat will get 
under way more quickly than if the pull is easy, that is, the 
boat will gain more velocity per unit of time under the action 
of a hard pull than under the action of an easy pull. There- 
fore, any precise statement of the effect of an unbalanced 
force on a given body must correlate the precise value of the 
force and the exact amount of velocity produced per unit of 
time by the force. This seems a very difficult thing, but its 
apparent difficulty is very largely due to the fact that we have 
not as yet agreed as to what we are to understand by the state- 
ment that one force is precisely three, or four, or any number 
of times as great as another. Suppose, therefore, that we 
agree to call one force twice as large as another when it will 
produce in a given body twice as much velocity in a given 
time (remembering of course that we are now talking about 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 87 

unbalanced forces, or that we are assuming for the sake of 
simplicity of statement, that no dragging forces exist). As 
a result of this definition we may state that the amount of 
velocity produced per second in a given body by an unbalanced 
force is proportional to the force. 

Of course we know no more about the matter 
in hand than we did before we adopted the 
definition, but we do have a good illustration of 
how important a part is played in the study of 
physical science, by what we may call making up 
one's mind, in the sense of putting one's mind in 
order. This kind of thing is very prominent in 
the study of elementary science, and the rather 
indefinite reference in the story of the tasseled 
tadpole to an inward growth as needful before 
one can hope for any measure of success in our 
modern world was an allusion to this thing, the 
" making-up " of one's mind. Nothing is so es- 
sential in the acquirement of exact and solid 
knowledge as the possession of precise ideas, not 
indeed that a perfect precision is necessary as a 
means for retaining knowledge, but that nothing 
else so effectually opens the mind for the per- 
ception even of the simplest evidences of a sub- 
ject* 

* Opens the mind, that is, for those things which are conformable 
to or consistent with the ideas. The history of science presents many 
cases where accepted ideas have closed the mind to contrary evi- 
dences for many generations. Let young men beware! 



88 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

Bacon long ago listed in his quaint way the 
things which seemed to him most needful for the 
advancement of learning. Among other things 
he mentioned " A New Engine or a Help to the 
mind corresponding to Tools for the hand," and 
the most remarkable aspect of present-day- 
physical science is that aspect in which it con- 
stitutes a realization of this New Engine of 
Bacon. We continually force upon the ex- 
tremely meager data obtained directly through 
our senses, an interpretation which, in its com- 
plexity and penetration, would seem to be en- 
tirely incommensurate with the data themselves,* 
and we exercise over physical things a kind of 
rational control which greatly transcends the 
native cunning of the hand. The possibility of 
this forced interpretation and of this rational 
control depends upon the use of two complexes : 
(a) A logical structure, that is to say, a body of 
mathematical and conceptual theory which is 

* An astronomer, for example, looks at a speck of light as it 
crosses the field of his telescope, and he listens to the beats of a clock, 
noting the time of day when the speck crosses the center line of the 
field. He then examines a set of fine lines on a divided circle, 
noting the angular altitude of the speck of light above the horizon. 
This he does three times in succession. Then he proceeds to calcu- 
late when the speck (a comet) will be nearest the sun, how far it 
will then be from the sun, how fast it will be moving, and when it 
will return, may be a hundred years hence! 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 89 

brought to bear upon the immediate materials of 
sense, and (b) a mechanical structure, that is to 
say, either (1) a carefully planned arrangement 
of apparatus, such as is always necessary in mak- 
ing physical measurements, or (2) a carefully 
planned order of operations, such as the suc- 
cessive operations of solution, reaction, precipi- 
tation, filtration, and weighing in chemistry. 

These two complexes do indeed constitute a 
New Engine which helps the mind as tools help 
the hand; it is through the enrichment of the 
materials of sense by the operation of this New 
Engine that the elaborate interpretations of the 
physical sciences are made possible, and the 
study of elementary physical science is intended 
to lead to the realization of this New Engine: 
(a) By the building up in the mind, of the logi- 
cal structure of the physical sciences; (b) by 
training in the making of measurements and in 
the performance of ordered operations, and (c) 
by exercises in the application of these things to 
the actual phenomena of physics and chemistry 
at every step and all of the time with every pos- 
sible variation. 

That, surely, is an exacting program; and the 
only alternative is to place the student under the 
instruction of Jules Verne where he need not 



90 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

trouble himself about foundations but may fol- 
low his teacher pleasantly on a care-free trip to 
the moon or with easy improvidence embark on 
a voyage of twenty- thousand leagues under the 
sea. 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR* 



The worst cant of our time, touching our sincerest re- 
ligion, of course, and handled to perfection by our easier 
college product, is the semi-serious wail of regret that a sil- 
ver-spoon smartness was not transmuted by a pleasant col- 
lege course into knowledge and appreciation of an idolized 
Science. 

Every loafer knows something of the unpleasant exactions 
of effective labor; but there never yet was a diletante who 
could even dream of the pains of those who really learn or 
of the grief of those who are wise. 



*By Franklin and MacNutt. Reprinted, with a few changes, 
from Science, for December 15, 1916. 



It has been recently announced in England that the most 
important man in the cabinet, next to the prime minister, will, 
after the war, be the president of the board of education. 
Such a thing would have been inconceivable in Victorian Eng- 
land, and yet the announcement has not been challenged or 
criticized except for the demand "Why wait till after the 
war?" 

The Springfield Republican. 

At the present moment the world, and not England merely, 
is in desperate need of educational reform ; but however great 
our need of practical efficiency and skill, wisdom will be the 
gravest need of the civilized world after the war. 

The Springfield Republican. 



The sharp debate on the place of science in 
education which took place recently in the House 
of Lords between Lord Haldane on the one side 
and Lord Cromer and Viscount Bryce on the 
other side is an example of the kind of misunder- 
standing which it is necessary to eliminate if we 
are to act wisely in the matter of education after 
the war. 

In his sesquicentennial address at Princeton 
University nineteen years ago Woodrow Wilson 
said that if he was not mistaken the " scientific 
spirit " of the age is doing us a great disservice, 
working in us a certain great degeneracy; and 
yet he said that he had no indictment against sci- 
ence itself, but only a warning to utter against 
the atmosphere which has stolen from our lab- 
oratories and lecture rooms and into the general 
air of the world at large. It is a noxious intoxi- 
cating gas which has somehow got into the lungs 
of the rest of us, a gas which, it would seem, 
forms only in the outer air. 

Now it is not easy even for one of Woodrow 
Wilson's training to express himself with perfect 
clearness in a matter of this kind; and although 
we are in full sympathy with what we under- 

93 



94 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

stand Dr. Wilson's point of view to be, we do not 
like his use of the term " scientific spirit." The 
true scientific spirit, the spirit of such men as 
Kelvin and Helmholtz, is beyond criticism; but 
the great things such men have done have 
brought upon us the most distressing and stupid 
form of idolatry the world has ever seen, and 
the men who have the true scientific spirit are 
the only men, as a rule, who are free from it. 

Science is finding out and learning how, 
whereas most people think of science only in 
terms of its material results. These results have 
indeed fascinated the crowd, and the great ma- 
jority of men have adopted a scale of physical 
values for everything in life with a consequent 
neglect of quality and a denial of human value 
in everything. We have a philosophy of rectan- 
gular beatitudes and spherical benevolences, a 
theology of universal indulgence, a jurispru- 
dence which will hang no rogues ; all of which 
means, in the root, incapacity of discerning 
worth and unworth in anything and least of all 
in man. Wheras, Nature and Heaven command 
us, at our peril, to discern worth from unworth 
in everything and most of all in man. 

Our real problem now, as always, is 'Who is 
best man?' and the fates forgive much — forgive 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR. 95 

the wildest, fiercest and cruelest experiments — 
if fairly made in the settling of that question. 
Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in 
their sight, and yet the favoring powers of the 
spiritual and material worlds will confirm to 
you your stolen goods, and their noblest voices 
applaud the lifting of your spear and rehearse 
the sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing 
and slaying have been done in fair arbitrament 
of that question ' Who is best man?' But if we 
refuse such inquiry we come at last to face the 
same question wrong side upwards, and our 
robbing and slaying must then be done to find 
out 'Who is worst man?' which in so wide an 
order of inverted merit is indeed not easy. 

This impassioned statement of a great English 
writer and moralist seems to us to touch the es- 
sence of all unfriendliness towards the sciences 
among seriously thoughtful men, and it must 
be admitted that "side by side with great ad- 
vances in material prosperity due largely to the 
applications of science there has been a vast de- 
terioration of character," as Lord Cromer ex- 
pressed it. 

Indeed Lord Cromer applied his statement 
particularly to the Germans, but the deteriora- 
tion of character, which has shown itself chiefly 
in the misuse of wealth and opportunity, is by 



96 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

no means confined to the Germans. In some re- 
spects, indeed, it would seem that the English 
and our own Americans have sinned more than 
the Germans. 

Lord Haldane and all champions of science 
teaching should understand that most of the 
unfriendliness towards science is a hatred of ma- 
terial worship ; and Lord Cromer and Viscount 
Bryce should understand that in their opposition 
to the extension of science teaching they are mis- 
directing their hatred of idolatry, and placing 
themselves in exactly the position of the old 
hand spinners when they opposed the introduc- 
tion of improved machinery years ago. It is 
now as much of a mistake to oppose the fullest 
and widest possible development of Finding Out 
and Learning How as it was years ago to oppose 
labor-saving machinery; only it is quite neces- 
sary to make readjustments for the conservation 
of character and morals — and physique! In- 
deed this necessity has shown itself most dis- 
tinctly in our reluctance to make just such read- 
justments among those whose labor has been so 
wonderfully "saved" by machinery! 

Nothing, perhaps, is farther from the ideals 
and methods of the mathematical sciences than 
literature and music and painting and sculpture, 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR. 97 

and yet many of our greatest scientists and engi- 
neers have held the aristic temperament to be 
the most important qualification for the investi- 
gator or builder. It certainly is not foolish, at 
any rate, to consider seriously the unfriendliness 
towards science teaching among those whose 
work is more closely connected with human 
things. Lord Cromer and Viscount Bryce no 
doubt agree with Woodrow Wilson in having no 
indictment against science itself, but they seem 
somehow to be unfriendly towards science teach- 
ing. 

Indeed there is a phase of science teaching for 
which there is an unfriendly feeling among 
those whose work is closely connected with ex- 
perimental science and engineering, and nothing 
has ever been said which can be more justly ap- 
plied in criticism of our more conventional 
courses in science than the following criticism of 
conventionalized art. The criticism is expressed 
in terms of the contrast between the two paths of 
art and it is illustrated by examples chosen from 
early barbarisms. 

The substitution of conventionalism for sympathy with ob- 
served life is the first characteristic of the hopeless work of all 
ages, and it is eminently manifested in the accompanying pic- 
ture of an angel from a psalter of the eighth century which is 



9§ BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

to be found in the library of St. John's College, Cambridge. 
This angel is a barbarism from which nothing could emerge, 
for which no future was possible but extinction. It repre- 
sents an utterly dead school of art which closed its eyes to 




An angel of the eighth century. The beginnings of art in England. 

natural facts (for however ignorant a person may be he need 
only look at a human being to see that it has a mouth as well 
as eyes) and made the attempt to adorn or idealize natural 
facts according to its own notions (for it put red spots in the 
middle of the hands and sharpened the thumbs thinking to 
improve them). Here you have an example of the worst that 
is possible in idealism. Whenever people don't look at nature 
they always think they can improve her. 

From this dead barbarism let us turn to a living barbarism, 
to work done by hands as rude and by minds as uninformed, 
let us turn to a picture of the Serpent Beguiling Eve, from 
the Church of St. Ambrogio of Milan. Its date is not 
known, but it is barbarous enough for any date: but rude 
and ludicrous as the sketch is, it does certainly have the ele- 
ments of life in it. The workman's whole aim was straight 
at the facts, and not merely at the facts but at the very heart 
of the facts, for he did indeed show Eve's state of mind, that 
she is pleased at being flattered and yet in an uncomfortable 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR. 99 

mood of hesitation; some look of listening, of complacency 
and embarrassment he did verily get into the picture; note 
the eyes slightly askance, the lips compressed and the right 
hand nervously grasping the left arm. Nothing was impos- 




The Serpent Beguiling Eve. The beginnings of art in Italy. 

sible to the people who began their art thus. The world was 
open to them and all that is in it; whereas nothing was pos- 
sible to the man who did the symmetrical angel, the world 
was keyless to him. He built a cell for himself in which he 
was barred up forever. 

Our conventionalized courses in science do 
not, however, take strong enough hold on young 
men to shut them up, as in a cell, forever! 
No, they certainly do not! But these courses do 
tend to separate ideas from sense material: 
whereas the very essence of science study should 
be to develop ideas in connection with sense ma- 
terial. 

Let no one imagine that unfriendliness to- 



100 bill's school and mine. 

wards conventional science teaching means any 
lack of appreciation of the necessity of the kind 
of precise thinking which is peculiar to the 
mathematical sciences, although much that has 
been said on this subject by mathematicians seems 
to be only a near-vision of that abstract heaven 
which, according to William James, is the one 
refuge of tender-minded philosophers. 

Nothing in this world is necessary which can 
be avoided, and it is much better to attempt to 
show that we can not get along without precise 
thinking than it is to pronounce eulogy thereon; 
and if one speaks of the necessity of precise ideas 
as a distressing thing, which it certainly is to 
many young men who aspire to be engineers and 
scientists, one may as it were by stealth gain en- 
trance to their primitive minds and convince 
them that men do not now live by hunting and 
fishing. This is what is attempted in the preced- 
ing essay on The Study of Science. 

Imagine a never-to-be-escaped human need of 
a twenty-foot arm. What age-long development, 
and what unthinkable pains ! It is easier to build 
a steam shovel! All of which means that homo 
sapiens is now bent towards social inheritance; 
but social inheritance has its own pains, as many 
know who burn the midnight oil. 



EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR. ioi 

Weh dem die Enkeln sind.* 

How shocking to reduce the tender-minded 
philosopher's love for perfect precision to a ma- 
terialistic preference for steam shovels as op- 
posed to immeasurable pains of birth! And to 
make mathematical philosophy appear as a dire 
necessity rather than a thing to be chosen for its 
own sake. And then to urgef with that lover of 
paradox, Gilbert Chesterton, that the serious 
spiritual and philosophic objection to steam 
shovels is not that men work at them and pay 
for them and make them very ugly, nor even that 
men are killed by them, but merely that men do 
not play at them! Imagine a group of sports- 
men cavorting over a ten-thousand acre field toss- 
ing and catching a Brobdingnagian ball in steam 
shovels ! It is conceivable that the one objection 
to the steam shovel might have been eventually 
overcome if the Great War had not come upon 
us. 

The great danger of our time has been the con- 
fusion of boundaries between thing-philosophy 
and human-philosophy, between the philosophy 

* This was addressed by Goethe directly to a young student " Weh 
dir das du ein Enkel bist." 

t See preface to Franklin and MacNutt's " Elements of Electricity 
and Magnetism." The Macmillan Co., 1908. 



102 bill's school and mine. 

of material conquest and power and that inti- 
mate philosophy of comfort which makes life 
not easy but worth while. When these bound- 
aries are rectified there will be a philosophy of 
steam shovels recognized and used as such, and 
another philosophy of living. Science will 
then stand as the essence of man's inescapable 
responsibilities in practical affairs, and we shall 
seek God, a finite God, in that which is inti- 
mately and even narrowly human, if narrowness 
there be in that supreme and illimitable mystery. 



An Elementary Treatise on 

CALCULUS 

291 Pages, $2.00 
By FRANKLIN, MACNUTT AND CHARLES 

" There is a movement among teachers to drop formality and 
verbiage in the exposition of what they have to teach, and to address 
their pupils plainly and directly as they would in a matter of busi- 
ness or sport. The examples are few at present, but they are suffi- 
ciently numerous to suggest that new ideas as to teaching are spread- 
ing, at any rate in science. A brilliant instance is 'An Elementary 
Treatise on Calculus' by William S. Franklin, Barry MacNutt and 
Rollin L. Charles of Lehigh University, in which the higher branches 
of mathematics are explained in a manner so attractive that not only 
students with the needed elementary grounding will be drawn to study 
them, but others will be tempted to acquire the simple mathematical 
foundation that will enable them to follow the author's demonstra- 
tions. * * * * It is not a case of trying to make mathematics easy, 
but of making the main principles intelligible." — New York Sun. 

" To make this acknowledged difficult subject comprehensible is 
the aim of this trio of authors. And they succeed in their effort." — 
Journal of Education (Boston). 



Bill's School and Mine 

102 Pages, $1.00 

By WILLIAM S. FRANKLIN 



THE ABOVE PRICES INCLUDE POSTAGE 

Address 

Franklin, MacNutt and Charles 

South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 



